taylor pyatt

This may be the last Five Favorite Things because surely we’ll all be dead by next Friday, drowned in our own prolific snot output. Perhaps this is how the zombie apocalypse will finally come. Maybe you should divert some of that retirement money we urged you to spend on Kleenex on machetes and shotguns instead. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Crazier things have happened. We’ll try to distract you from impending doom with these five amusing things.

Autopilot cars. Google, that bastion of knowledge and information, has transformed Prii (that’s the plural of Prius. Really. Google it. See – Google knows everything) into robot cars. They’ve been test piloting them around public streets and now they’re taking them to Vegas to show how effective they are against driving where there are a lot of distractions. Of course, there are those over-thinkers who are worried that self-driving cars are a sign of Big Brother’s influence, but we say pish. Those people clearly have not thought of the fabulous possibilities. Amylynn could sleep for ten more minutes in the car each morning. Ava’s family could stop worrying that she’s a menace to society when she’s driving her own car and Kelli could

Those short dinosaurs are in for nothing but trouble down there.

Facebook to her heart’s content. Genius. We want one.

Stinky dinosaurs. A study was published this week in Current Biology that postulates that the dinosaurs kept Earth 18 degrees hotter than it is now. Wanna know how? By farting. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently the sauropods were especially gassy with all the plants they ate. We’ve often considered that Earth would have been really lovely back then with all the wild, unbroken wilderness. Now we’re reconsidering. Quite frankly, instead of paradise the whole place sounds like it smelled like a frat house. **shudder**

Not another irritating person in sight

Town of the Future. They’re building it and we will come. We don’t know who “they” are but we need to make friends right quick. This town they’re building will be a 1 billion dollar scientific ghost town out in New Mexico somewhere. They plan to use it for research on everything from intelligent traffic systems (there isn’t one) to self-flushing toilets (??). Here’s the big selling point for the Sisters: no one will live there. It’s a giant, perfect fifteen square mile town void of morons. Perfect for the blogger who hates everyone else. Doesn’t it sound like heaven? No one to pester you and you don’t even have to flush your own toilet. Bliss.

Haboobs. Our town had a haboob this weekend. That means we had a massive dust storm. It doesn’t mean anything about having boobs, which we do, two each as prescribed by current social convention. There isn’t anything especially funny about dust storms but we defy you not to giggle while watching the local newscasters say “haboob” over and over again, all agitated and self-important like only local newscasters can be. Habooooooob. We don’t care what most of the world thinks, those Middle Easterners must have a sense of humor to come up with that word. Haboooooob. **giggle**

Western Conference Finals. Amylynn has been trying to figure out a way to mention hockey on this blog for weeks and now’s her chance. The Coyotes have moved to the Western Conference finals for the Stanley Cup and it’s a really big deal because never in the entire history of the organization have they made it this far. Also, even better, the NHL thinks they finally have a buyer that will take over the team who will leave them in Phoenix, shushing all the horrific rumors of the team leaving. Amylynn is beside herself with glee over the whole thing. Her family just wants it to be over. Ava smiles at her like you would a slightly crazy person who might hurt you with their enthusiasm. Kelli ignores her altogether. Amylynn doesn’t care. But we suggest you save yourself and not ask her opinion on save percentages and brilliant goal tending or you’ll hear an endless ode to goalie Mike Smith. And for heaven’s sake don’t mention Shane Doan or she gets all swoony and, really, that’s sorta icky. Go Yotes!

I was driving to work today on my usual route which takes me through a residential area as a short cut. There is a house I particularly like so I always look at it as I pass. This morning I noticed a poinsettia in the kitchen window for the first time. Inexplicably, this irritated the hell out of me. I felt that hot rush of ire bloom in my belly before I took a mental step back and wondered why this bothered me so much. It’s a stupid plant. Who cares?

I think it had to do with the holiday season. Poinsettias are Christmas flowers. Much like lights on the front porch, poinsettias need to be out of sight well before March 1st.

I’m adding this infraction to the things that just drive me crazy.

People with their Christmas lights out all year.

People who try to keep the poinsettia all year.

People who stop two car lengths behind the person in front of them at traffic lights. If your depth perception is this bad, for the love of Zeus, get you and your rolling death machine off the road.

The idiots that own the weird antique mall by my house that have a collection of giant metal animals in the parking lot. They keep painting them weird colors. Some people think it’s whimsical. It annoys the crap out of me. When the life-sized giraffe showed up painted red and blue I almost burst a gasket. I have no idea why this bothers me as much as it does.

Strangers who talk to you when you’re reading.

Idiots who can’t figure out how to use the drop off lane at the elementary school.

Morons who can’t count to 15 in the express lane at the grocery store. 21 Yoplait yogurts do not count as one item just because they’re the same thing.

The newspaper delivery person who can’t even get the paper into my yard. I think he literally drops it out the car window because I usually find it on the curb.

Really, the problem is that I hate other people. Ava, Kelli and I often discuss dropping out of society all together. We are perfect candidates for hermithood. If we were hermits living alone in a nicely appointed cave (read: air-conditioned with wall to wall carpet and feather beds) we wouldn’t be forced to tolerate those jackasses who leave countless spam comments, in gibberish or Russian no less, on this blog.

Like this:

Well, here we are again. Another Friday. This means that we’ve all survived Monday through Thursday again. That’s saying something since the kid’s grades came out this week, Amylynn caught some sort of Typhoid/Legionnaires/Tuberculosis hybrid, and the Republicans are still making complete asses of themselves. Let’s hope the third week in February is less exciting shall we? It’s probably a futile hope, but we should still make an effort. Even though there wasn’t a lot to recommend this week, there was still some funny stuff.

1. Rachel Gibson.We just got an ARC (Advanced Readers Copy) of her latest book, Rescue Me. It’s a May release so we read it three months early (You’re totally jealous!). For all you Rachel Gibson fans out there, it’s really good, chock full of her trademark wit and superior storytelling. Amylynn especially loves Rachel’s current series because the heroes have focused on the fictional Seattle Chinooks Hockey team – although this latest one only has the barest glimpse of hockey, it does carry over a character from the most recent book. However, because this one is still on the fringes of Amylynn’s favorite sport, she did actually squeal when Rachel mentioned her favorite hockey team, the Phoenix Coyotes. One player was mentioned by name as a favorite of the character in the book – Ed Jovanovski. Unfortunately, Jovi was traded back to Florida in 2011. Rachel picked the wrong player. Shane Doan is the preferred player on the team and always will be. We like him best even if Jovi was still around. If that panda bear smuggling operation turns out alright, Mr.

This isn't the actual cake. We didn't want you to get any crazy ideas...

Doan is next.

2. White cake. The Sisters have found the place of the finest white cake in all of cake making history. We’re not telling you where it is. We told you about the red velvet cupcakes and look how that turned out. You people aren’t to be trusted. If, however, you’re exceedingly nice to us (read: you don’t aggravate the crap out of us on a regular basis) we’ll bring you a piece. Oh, how we love this cake. It comes in pieces about 2×4 inches and all the sides are covered with fabulous white sprinkles and butter crème frosting. Really it’s like having a piece of wedding cake without having to attend a hideous wedding where you have to pretend that drunken aunts doing the chicken dance is cute.

3. Bunny racing.Did you know that there is such a thing as bunny racing? Amylynn saw it on The Amazing Race last season and it was adorable. The WSJ

We're going to get one just like this one and name him Hector

reported on it again today. Fuzzy bunnies are trained to run obstacle courses with steeples to jump. You’ve never seen anything so cute as floppy-eared bunnies hopping down a lane and popping over little hurdles and stiles. It seems that this “sport” originated in Sweden were apparently all the best bunnies live, and now the activity is catching on in England. We are so in. It seems like bunnies would be more fun to cuddle and cost a lot less than horses. When asked how to pick the perfect bunny, a preeminent bunny trainer suggests, “ You want [a bunny with] a cool, positive attitude.” You can tell the cool bunnies cause they’re off smoking behind the hutch and talking about cars.

4. The Dowager. We love Maggie Smith in any project she takes on. Most recently, Ms. Smith is one of the stars of Downton Abbey, the hugely popular PBS series about the inner workings and lives of a titled English family during World War 1. Kelli is a huge fan of the show and, one of these days, Amylynn and Ava are going to take the time to watch the first season. Maggie Smith plays the Dowager and, because of her station in life, pretty much gets to say whatever she wants. We read the following quote, “I’m a woman, Mary. I can be as contrary as I choose” and decided she was brilliant. We’re going to have t-shirts made.

5. Map Guy. Amylynn and Ava took the opportunity at lunch today to torture the employees at a map store. Ava’s latest work in progress required that she find a topographical map in order to get a real handle on one of the major premises of the plot. It’s not like when create our wants and needs we intend them to be impossible on purpose, it just works out that way. If ever you find the need for a map, we suggest you try our guy. Not only was he really patient and helpful, he was also kind of funny. Kind of funny trumps a lot of other concerns. Concerns like: #1 why could we hear chirping birds INSIDE the store and #2 why did it smell like they were ironing in there. We never did find out the answers to those questions, but Map Guy did find what Ava was looking for – mostly – for a miserly $11.95, which fits nicely within the austerity guidelines Ed has set for Ava. Map Guy probably had to go lie down after we left, but we thought he was lovely.